Wednesday 18 February 2015

Existing as a Dummy.

Let’s go back a few weeks to Kurt Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse 5. (Let’s.)

The novel postulates, through a character, that existence is not a matter of temporal, linear flow, but a series of individual moments strung together to look like linear flow. Further, that these moments exist simultaneously, have always existed, and always will exist. (I suppose that’s how God manages to be omniscient, and how the Akashic records could be a viable possibility.) A person’s life, therefore, does not end when he or she dies. Every moment of that life continues to exist, and death is simply one of the moments.

I have a problem. How long is a moment? Anything we call a moment has to have a temporal span. If it didn’t, it couldn’t exist and nothing could exist within it (because there is no within.) So what am I missing?

And I was thinking tonight how much I like the idea that existence began with a sound.

In the beginning was the word…

Father, Son and Holy Ghost (sound.)

Tat, Sat, Om (sound.)

Only now I have another problem. Could somebody please tell me what there was before the sound was made, and could you please do so without using the word ‘nothing.’ That’s where I fall over.

I wonder whether Stephen Hawking reads my blog. I tried to read one of his books once and didn’t get very far. Clearly, I’m either very dumb or very lazy. I sometimes wish I wasn’t so ordinary.

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